Once My Looks Go, I've Got Nothing

Anyone with more than a passing familiarity with me knows that I have an extensive history of making decisions ranging anywhere from questionable to downright insane. Usually, I am fully cognizant of the consequences of these decisions, so when my wrist shatters or I find myself in a month-long depressive funk due to the ramifications of my choices, I am not so much awed by the after-effects as I am by the lunacy that allowed them to come to pass in the first place. The water bottles, though… See, oftentimes the most seemingly innocuous decisions, mere ripples in the ocean of choices we all make every day, end up creating a veritable tsunami of long-term effects when analyzed in hindsight. Nowhere has this been clearer to me than when I began pondering the ramifications of one of the most mundane decisions a person can make: I decided one afternoon to purchase a twelve-pack of bottled water at Safeway. On the surface, it seems almost impossible for the event to have any life-long s...

“Damn it!” I exclaimed as I slammed my computer keyboard in frustration, sending up a thick cloud of Cool Ranch Dorito dust. I took one of the angriest sips of Red Bull in the history of man and threw myself backwards against my chair, which rocked haphazardly due to the sudden force. Stupid low-quality furniture I pick up off the sidewalk. But my angst this afternoon had nothing to do with the decomposing construct I called my chair. Rather, the object of my ire was a tad more abstract: the internet. Not the entire thing (I love me some porn and fast food reviews), but rather the fact that the internet has a certain galling way of perpetuating things I might wish myself and others to simply forget about. Examples of this include Rick Astley, Goatse and my own personal lapses in judgment. Well, maybe not Rick Astley. Anyway, I had just spent hours trying to erase a particularly grievous error of mine from several years ago, but I was at a loss. Forced to confront my o...

The holidays are a spectacular time of year, a season where the chilly weather is counterbalanced by the warmth and cheer of spending time with our loved ones. I am a deeply compassionate man, though, and as a result such mirthful activities at times lead me to feel pangs of sadness for those among us who lack family and friends, who have fallen on hard times and who could probably use a little cheering up. Recently I decided to don my Santa hat and give the gift of conversation and whiskey to an old friend who has seen better days. You probably know Grimace from McDonald's long-running and moderately emotionally scarring ad campaign for children, wherein Grimace is one of the characters often seen frolicking among sentient food items. Like his compatriot The Hamburglar, Grimace was introduced in a villainous role during the early days of the ad campaign, but Grimace was quick to change his ways (and appearance) to become the cuddly amorphous blob we all know and...well, not love...

As the summer of 2003 set in, Steel & Marsilio was, at best, in limbo. Back then, uploading content to the internet was not so easy as it is today, so any potential projects Garrett and I might make had no clear method of distribution. Since we had never exactly been renowned for our productivity, the fact that anything we produced might never be seen by anyone (although, given the viewership of public access, one might venture to say no one had ever seen anything we’d done) meant that we simply didn’t do anything. Well, we went to Rasputin Music a fair amount, but I’d say that doesn’t really apply. One day, our fortunes shifted, as Garrett received a letter from the public access station in Mountain View, KMVT15. Apparently, since the De Anza television station closed, the responsibilities for Cupertino’s public access now fell to KMVT, a larger and presumably more financially secure station. When Cupertino closed, I guess the Mountain View staff asked our old ...

Immediat- ely (relatively, at least) after the third episode of Steel & Marsilio wrapped, Garrett pitched a theme for our next project: “The Steel & Marsilio Halloween Spectacular.” My lifelong love of Halloween put me on board without hesitation. The idea of having a central theme for an entire episode was new to us, but we had made great strides in finding our voice, and it seemed like a good idea to take our usual random pastiche of skits and have some unifying factor tying them together, albeit loosely. That the factor in question was my favorite holiday made it all the more appealing. The pieces were in place for our best work ever. Mikey agreed to continue handling our editing, so the usual scramble to find an editor was not an issue, and Garrett and I had a wealth of ideas. In addition, we had learned from some of our past mistakes, so we decided from the outset that this episode would be comprised of a greater number of shorter skits rather than our previous handfuls ...

The pilot of Steel & Marsilio was in the can and, minor glitches aside (for example, I thought I could watch the broadcast premiere at my parents’ San Jose home…turns out there’s a reason it’s called Cupertino Public Access), we were off and running. After a brief respite to bask in the glory of our accomplishment (read: get drunk and watch the pilot over and over), Garrett and I set to work planning our second episode. The idea was simple: as much as we liked the first episode, we were conscientious of its flaws and sought to improve our overall product. In a sense, the second episode was a beefed up version of the pilot. It followed the same basic structure, but with a host of changes that, in large part, added to the overall experience. There was a brief, mildly surreal intro, followed by a lengthy opening credits sequence, just like the pilot, but this time the credits sequence had a discernible plot (in this case, a gangsta/drug dealer vignette) that ended ...

With the upcoming release of the Steel & Marsilio: Season One DVD, several people have expressed curiosity as to what exactly Steel & Marsilio is all about. This, in conjunction with a puzzling lack of interview requests, has spurred me to pen a series of articles about S & M ’s rich history, as well as its bright future. Without further ado, allow me to present Part One of the Steel & Marsilio Companion. I may as well start in the halcyon days of my youth, before Steel & Marsilio (as a televised program, anyway) existed. Garrett Wroblewski and I met in 1999, when I was a senior and he was a junior at Monta Vista High School in Cupertino, CA. Destiny, for whatever reason (ed. note: Money. It was money) led post-graduation Joey to De Anza, the local community college, and Garrett followed me there soon after. Though in the interim year we hung out quite a bit and collaborated on some things (a skit wherein we played the biggest Kriss Kross fans in the world, co...